Is it really necessary to frisk a Congressman?Ron Paul Family Detained
by TSA Again. For the second time this year, the Paul family has been harassed by the Transportation Security Administration.
Rep. Ron Paul, his wife, and granddaughter were stopped by eight TSA workers at a small airport in Clearwater, Florida, and told they must
be screened. According to the agents, the screening was necessary because Mitt Romney "might be nearby." Observers say the
implication was that the Paul family poses a threat to the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

TSA
detains, interrogates Ron Paul's family and aides. TSA agents did not cite any specific threat, but insinuated the
Paul family was a threat to Mitt Romney, claiming the nominee "might be nearby." The pilot reminded agents the plane itself,
filled with fuel, was a bomb. Agents persisted with demands that the passengers be thoroughly examined, but Carol, Paul's
76-year-old wife, has a pacemaker. She refused to submit to a search while an aide began recording the event. Eventually,
the agents relented. Private aircraft are not subjected to the same rigorous security screenings of commercial aircraft, leading
some to believe Paul's family was targeted by the agency.

When
political correctness collides with political correctness. [Scroll down] In fact, service dogs routinely
fly with their disabled masters. Lately miniature horses have shown up on planes and, last November, ABC News reported
a 300 pound pot bellied pig on a flight from Philly to Seattle. [...] Airlines are required to allow these animals
on board at no extra charge, and any rejection of a service animal on a flight must be documented in writing for the DOT.
Airport owners are also required to provide "relief areas" for service animals. Americans are indoctrinated to accept
any special accommodation for the disabled. [...] But what about the average Muslim passenger? What happens (and it
will happen) when the Muslim traveler demands the removal from the flight of the "unclean" dog or the (Allah help us) pig?

The Editor says...
Why is a guy with a Muslim name doing passenger screening in the first place? Maybe he didn't want to find anything
suspicious. How many other airports have mice inspecting the cheese?

FAA rips Delta passenger for filming bird strike with iPad.
Grant Cardone, 54, became a viral hit after posting a video of birds being sucked into the engine of his Los Angeles-bound Delta flight on April 19. The
plane was forced to turn back to the airport and landed safely, the New York Post reports. Soon afterward, Cardone received an official letter from the FAA
complaining the video was taken illegally because he used his iPad to film the strike, and use of portable electronic devices is prohibited during "critical" phases
of a flight, such as takeoffs. Electronic devices also cannot be used during an in-flight emergency.

The Editor says...
Really? I would think that an in-flight emergency would be the best time to start taking pictures. And if the plane is in a Muslim-induced tailspin,
there's no reason to stay off the phone.

Dying St. Pete man says
airline won't refund his ticket. Jerry Meekins says he is dying. The St. Petersburg man says he has been battling esophageal cancer
for some time, but doctors recently told him the cancer has spread and his condition is terminal. So he was surprised when he tried to explain
his situation to a customer service representative at Spirit Airlines.

Why Airport Security Is Broken — And
How To Fix It. More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so
hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel
demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has
plainly failed to achieve.

Obama Dances the Jizya. Formally, the
jizya is a "tax" paid by kafirs already living under Muslim domination. It is a tax that must be paid at risk of losing one's
head. Moreover, the jizya is not just a "head" tax; it is also intended to be a form of humiliation. ... Every time you go
through security at an airport, you are in effect paying the jizya. You are also being humiliated. This is the price we
must pay in order not to be blown up.

Frightening
frosting? TSA confiscates cupcake. An airport security officer confiscated a frosted cupcake amid
fears its icing could be a security risk, according to reports. Rebecca Hains said the Transportation
Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas took her cupcake Wednesday
[12/21/2011]. According to Hains, he told her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA
restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives.

Officials
From Terror-Sponsoring State 'Exempted From Enhanced Screening' by TSA. While six-year-old girls and
retired school teachers with bladder cancer were subjected to intrusive pat-downs by Transportation Security
Administration officials at U.S. airports after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate his underwear on a
Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas 2009, officials from Sudan — one of just four countries the State
Department lists as a state sponsor of terrorism — were "exempted from enhanced screening" at airports,
according to a State Department cable obtained by CNSNews.com.

We All Have
Something to Hide. [Scroll down] Nonetheless, visiting the loo when your seatmate does
is now terroristic. And the hysterical fool who "saw something and said something" unleashed the entire
"homeland-security" apparatus on our unsuspecting trio in Row X: "A military escort kept track of
the Frontier Airlines flight as it neared Detroit. On the ground, the plane moved away from the gate
to a remote part of the airfield. A SWAT team then stormed the plane..."

Donald
Rumsfeld gets a TSA pat down. They have subjected babies and the elderly to controversial full body
searches at airport security. And now the TSA has shown that no one is immune to the probing hands of its
agents including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Napolitano:
No "Logic" In Profiling Muslim Men Under The Age Of 35. "You're not using good logic there.
You've got to use actual intelligence that you received. And, so, you might — all you've given
me is a kind of status. You have not given me a technique for tactic or behavior. Something that
would suggest somebody is not Muslim, but Islamic, that has actually moved into the category of violent
extremists," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a forum on U.S. security and preventing
terrorist attacks.

GOP
lawmaker: I saw TSA pat down 'little old lady,' child, but not Arab man. The Transportation
Security Administration is too worried about "political correctness," according to a Republican lawmaker.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said TSA is too politically
correct when it chooses which passengers to search at airport security checkpoints.

Will
an FAA Budget Cut Reduce Safety? Each Boeing 747 costs $317 million, its 777 goes for
$284 million and its 737 sells for $80 million. Airbus' giant 555-plus passenger A380 sells
for $375 million. Here's a true or false statement: If it weren't for the FAA, airline
company CEOs would not take the necessary measures to ensure that their aircraft took off and landed safely.
I'd say the statement is false. Even if CEOs didn't give a hoot about passengers, I'm betting that they
do care, without FAA edicts, whether billions of dollars worth of aircraft landed and took off safely, and
they will spend enough on maintenance to ensure that.

A People's Approach to National Security. Airport
security did not stop a single attack on September 11. And despite the assorted humiliations and rules imposed in the
decade since, it has yet to do any better. Time after time again, when the terrorists are challenged, it is by the passengers
who rise to do battle with them. It is not governments that stop terrorists, but people who do. The TSA model of
airline security which says that everyone is a suspect, stands in stark contrast to what really works.

PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron.
What's going on at airports around the nation is not, repeat not, for the protection of the flying
public. This odious system is set up to protect one thing and one thing only: political
correctness. In this particular incarnation of PC, it is the willful and calculated determination to
ignore the reality that virtually all terrorist acts are committed by radical Muslim males between the ages
of 17 and 45. If that were the extent of it, it would be problematic enough. But it is
precisely the same PC which countenances that radicalization in American mosques, madrassas, prisons and on
college campuses, even as those who point out such realities are labeled "Islamophobic." It is the same
PC which erodes the common sense and common decency of a public becoming "accustomed" to getting scanned and
groped by government strangers in order to "feel a little safer."

FAA chief suspends dozing
air traffic controller. The nation's top aviation official says he's suspended a control
tower supervisor while investigating why no controller was available to aid two planes that landed at
Washington's Reagan airport earlier this week.

Air
controller caught sleeping on the job. Two airliners landed at Reagan National Airport
near Washington without control tower clearance because the air traffic supervisor was asleep, safety
and aviation officials say.

FAA
Wake-Up Call. In the past few weeks, there have been at least four cases — that we
know of — where flight controllers have fallen asleep while they were supposed to be guiding planes
safely to their destinations. The latest happened in Reno Wednesday while a medical plane was
trying to land. In response to this outbreak of sleepiness, the FAA ordered extra controllers
to a couple of dozen airports and suspended those caught napping, while Air Traffic Organization chief
Hank Krakowski resigned.

FAA
executive quits over sleeping controllers. The head of the Air Traffic Organization, a part
of the Federal Aviation Administration that oversees the nation's air traffic control system, resigned
Thursday [4/14/2011] after disclosures of air traffic controllers who were caught sleeping on the job,
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced.

Adding
2nd air traffic controller will likely mean two people nodding off. The Federal Aviation
Administration has fired its air-traffic division chief after controllers were found sleeping on the job for,
amazingly, the fifth time in three weeks. The snoozing happened at Reagan National Airport in Washington
as well as in towers in Reno, Nev.; Seattle; Lubbock, Texas, and Knoxville, Tenn., where the guy bedded
down, complete with blanket, for five hours.

Feds
Have Long Known of Sleepy Air Traffic Controllers. There is growing evidence that the FAA
has known about the threat of sleeping air traffic controllers for decades. The agency commissioned
a study as far back as the 1970s on fatigue among controllers. More recently, in 1997, the publication,
"Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine," concluded there was a likelihood controllers were, indeed,
falling asleep on the job.

Airport
bans toy soldier's three-inch rifle from plane. The crouching, camouflaged figure is most
certainly armed. But few would say he was dangerous. Security officials disagreed however when
he passed through a scanner at Gatwick Airport. His three-inch, plastic toy gun was branded a 'firearm'
and banned from a transatlantic flight.

Stupidity
at the Top. Our current airport security system is based on the stupid idea that every human being
about to board a plane is assumed to be planning to commit suicide by blowing up the plane. This includes
seniors in wheelchairs, toddlers, nuns, pilots, flight attendants, businessmen, movie stars, legislators,
teachers, and everyone else. It should be easy enough to pick out of a group of passengers the one or
two persons who look like they are planning to commit suicide by blowing up the plane. Especially if
they've bought one-way tickets and have no luggage. But stupidity reigns in our transportation
security department which would rather subject all passengers to groping pat-downs rather than select those
who look and act like terrorists.

Profiling: American as
Apple Pie. Profiling is an essential part of organized life, and it is accepted as normal in
most circumstances. It all depends on who is being profiled and who is protesting. Selwyn Duke
recently discussed demographic profiling in an [American Thinker] article where he correctly pointed to the
fact that police for years have had a much keener interest in young people, particularly males, than in any
other demographic group. Duke's premise — that the process is purely and simply demographic
profiling grounded in the legitimate stereotype of the reckless, risk-taking young male — got me
to thinking that such profiling (yes, even racial profiling) is rampant in our society. In fact, such
profiling is practiced daily throughout the country by the risk managers and actuaries of insurance companies
for a variety of coverages.

TSA: a profile in cowardice. At
the TSA political correctness trumps security, meaning that it's okay to intrusively inconvenience 100% of
travelers, so long as that small percentage of potentially aggrieved followers of a death cult aren't singled
out. As result more and more people are giving up flying, which very likely is one of the outcomes that
Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki are looking for. It's clear that we have lost the will to prevail,
given our responses to being attacked by an alien philosophy.

If You Wanna Get Through Security. It looks
like the only way we can avoid having our wedding tackle filmed or fumbled is to wear a burka because the DHS doesn't hassle
Muslims who, pardon my redundancy, happen to be the only one's who're attacking us.

Multiculturalism
Hits The Wall. To avoid the taint of profiling, the TSA adapted what amounted to a policy of absolute
mathematical randomness, in which airline passengers were halted and searched according to no rational pattern.
This led to searches of small children, elderly women, the visibly ill and crippled, nuns, and numerous other
menaces to national security. The result was open public contempt and the reduction of the TSA to sheer
ineffectuality — of recent major airline attacks, not a single one was countered by the TSA. All
were curtailed by airline passengers.

Muslim Brotherhood Front Group Trains Airport
Screeners. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has completed training for 2,200 Transportation
Safety Officers (TSOs) at the Los Angeles International Airport according to a press release found on the MPAC
website. The MPAC release notes that the two-month training course informed officers of "the diversity
of Muslims around the world from cultural dress to language to tenets. The four trainers taught the
TSOs how to properly handle a Quran and discussed the different ways Muslim women and men choose to cover or
dress.

Security Screening and
Probability Denial. The Transportation Security Administration's controversial passenger
screening policies demonstrate just how distorted our priorities have become. We have maneuvered
ourselves into being more terrified of being accused of racism than we are of death. ... The TSA is
behaving as if there are no outward signs of a passenger's likelihood of committing a terrorist act.
Our policy makers are pretending that probability is irrelevant in making choices and designing policies.

Profile Muslims or Pat
Down the Masses? With all the bad press the TSA has received recently, we can't be sure if the
acronym stands for Transportation Security Administration, Touches Sensitive Areas or Truly Scandalous Attention.
But, for sure, its pat downs and sci-fi radiation screeners give many of us another good reason to avoid the
increasingly unfriendly skies. ... It's much like treating a cancer: If you cannot target just the
affected tissue, the only other solution is to treat the whole body.

Forget
Body Scans and Pat Downs — Let's Get Busy Profiling. Why don't we start profiling for
terrorists and stop trying to put everyone from toddlers to granny through the same security procedures at
airports? We're wasting money, time and the people's patience in an effort to be politically correct.
In the end, it's not keeping us any safer; if anything it's making us less safe since it's diverting resources
that could otherwise be used on better intelligence gathering, or developing screening devices for cargo on
commercial and civilian aircraft, or checking containers before they enter U.S. ports.

I'm fed up with the TSA. How many
bombers has the TSA thwarted since its inception? The answer is zero. Contrast that figure with
the gallons and gallons of hand lotion the agency has confiscated. As bags pass on the conveyer belt,
agents stare intently at x-ray screens. What could they be looking for? Could it be that one of
these passengers standing in line could be attempting to smuggle a bomb on board? Of course not!
The agents are looking for yogurt! They are looking for baby formula! They are looking for
deodorant larger than the allowable three ounces.

TSA Security Measures Show
Insanity of Government. So, let's see what we've got here... A man who has made multiple
trips to terrorist training camps is credibly alerted as a potential threat — by his own father,
no less — and yet we somehow let him get on board a U.S. flight anyway. Meanwhile, the
millions of travelers who pose no credible threat whatsoever get to see their trips made more
miserable for reasons that make no sense. Tell me again why we want to put government
in charge of anything?

TSA
"Security": Yet Another Federal Disaster. In view of the fact that we just can't seem to get
away from terrorists bent on blowing us to smithereens, perhaps we should ask ourselves: what is the
safest airline in the world to travel, and the safest airport in the world to travel out of? If we can
answer these questions, and study what those people do, perhaps we can learn how to do it ourselves.
And those answers are...

Airport Insecurity. [Scroll
down] The bottom line to all of this is that the way we go about airport screening in the US is not
effective. We're screening for potential weapons instead of potential terrorists. Instead of
being proactive, we're reactive. ...We put our faith in more and more machines, which are more and more
expensive. Now they're installing new machines that can see through your clothing. So the bad guys
just shift tactics and do things like implanting explosives into their bodies. I keep saying this, but
we need to learn from the best — Israel. Nobody hijacks their planes. Nobody sets bombs off on
their planes. Nobody messes with Israel. Why? Because they're not afraid to do what the
politically correct weenies who run our airport insecurity services are afraid to do. Israel
profiles.

The Unfriendly Skies. We
take risks each and every time we step out of our homes and don't need the government to decide for us which
risks are acceptable. So why, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, must our seats be in
their original and upright position as we begin our descent, a full 20 minutes before we land? What
are the actual risks to unclipping our seat belts seconds before the plane has come to a full and complete
stop? Why can't we use our cell phones while taxiing at LAX, but can do so at Heathrow?

On
US no-fly list: An 8-yr-old called Mikey. "Meet Mikey Hicks," said Najlah Feanny Hicks,
introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane
without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. "It's not a myth." Michael
Winston Hicks's mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on
their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name "was on the list," she
recalled.

The Ethics of Profiling. In
the wake of al-Qaeda's failed Christmas Day plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253, several security
discussions, once thought closed, ought to be reopened. Among them: this nation's aversion to "profiling"
our adversaries. ... Profiling our enemies wherever they may be — most imperatively, at the
location and moment of attack — is not only logical, but ethical.

Profile or die. My
name is Ted Nugent, and I profile. And it is good. ... I profile my daughter's dates. I profile my
children's friends. I profile my band mates and employees. I profile the fruit I am about to purchase.
I profile the sky in order to ascertain my potential need for rain gear. I profile the cleanliness of
dining establishments and smiling all the way, I profile the general public as I pleasantly stroll the
not-so-mean streets of America. Conditional and environmental awareness is a powerful survival tool.

I Think, Therefore I Profile.
Two recent events have propelled the issue of profiling to the forefront. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed
an immigration bill that "requires police to question people if there is reason to suspect that they're in the
United States illegally." And on May 1, a Pakistani-American failed to set off a car bomb in Times
Square. In both situations, Americans are exhorted to refrain from profiling.

The runway to Flight 253. To
believe that restricting lavatory use and keeping blankets off the laps of grandmothers will make air travel
safer is to believe in a myth that should be insulting to every law abiding air passenger. All passengers
are not the problem, and not all passengers pose a threat to air travel. To make air travel safer, we must
identify potential threats before they board an aircraft. To do so, we must first break free from the bonds
of political correctness and admit, without feelings of guilt or reservation that the threat is originating from
Islamic terrorists and those who facilitate them.

Security
Theater Now Playing at Your Airport. [Scroll down] Worse yet, consider the panicky Mickey-Mouse,
and embarrassing steps the U.S. Transportation Security Administration implemented hours after the Detroit bombing
attempt: no crew announcements "concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks," and disabling
all passenger communications services. During a flight's final hour, passengers may not stand up, access
carry-on baggage, nor "have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap." ... The TSA engages
in "security theater" — bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk
offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion.

Bombs Don't Take Down
Airliners — People Take Down Airliners. Anyone who has flown since 9/11 knows the effects
of airline terrorism on airport security — remove the shoes and belt, laptops in the bin, no liquids,
and on and on. Everyone is subjected to these protocols. Businessmen, mothers of toddlers,
toddlers themselves, grandmothers, foreigners, citizens — we all endure the same drill. Most
amusing are the "reaction checks." After 9/11, sharp blades were the rage (the rage of
airport screeners' scrutiny, that is). After the shoe bomber it was shoes, then
it was the 3 oz. limit on liquids — as if 2.5 oz. of liquid is safe, but 3.5 oz.
is a threat.

Groups Say
Screening Invites Bias. Twenty-seven organizations on Friday [1/8/2010] asked the Department of
Homeland Security to change newly tightened airport-security rules that they say will result in racial and
ethnic profiling. ... Among the groups are the Muslim Advocates, the Arab American Institute, the Muslim Bar
Associations in several states and the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee.

Profile Away. In the
wake of the "underwear bomber," why is it still politically incorrect to talk about profiling? The TSA
makes all of us remove our shoes and surrender our shaving cream. Shouldn't they also keep a profile of
what potential terrorists do and aggressively screen people accordingly? Not just obvious things like
screening people whose parents have reported them as possible terrorists, but also people buying
tickets with cash, buying one-way tickets, traveling with little/no luggage (oh, wait, the underwear
terrorist did ALL of those things).

Profile Me if You Must.
I don't want to be profiled at the airport. It has happened before, and I hate it. Volunteering for
more isn't what I feel like doing right now, but our airport security system is so half-baked and dysfunctional
it may as well not even exist, and flying is about to become more miserable anyway. So rather than doubling
down on grandma and micromanaging everyone on the plane, we might want to pay as much attention to people as to
their luggage, especially military-aged males who make unusual and suspicious-looking travel arrangements.

In Defense of Profiling.
Let's get one thing straight right up front: Profiling is an effective tool. ... I want airport security
personnel to discriminate between terrorists and non-terrorists. The reason discrimination has gotten a
bad rap is because we, the silent majority of clear-headed, right-thinking Americans, have permitted the
American Left to control our language. We have allowed the Left to imbue certain words with so much
negative connotation that we have, in effect, added them to the ... list of words you can never say.

Being Serious about Airport Security:
A couple weeks ago I was at the airport going through security at about 6:00 AM. I was sleep deprived
and in a rather foul mood when the Transportation Security Agency decided that they had to confiscate my keychain.
You see, my keychain was a rounded piece of metal resembling a bullet with Charlton Heston's signature engraved
on the side. It was a membership gift for joining the National Rifle Association some years ago. The
artifact was silver in color and somewhat cartoonish in shape. It bore little resemblance to a real bullet.
You can imagine my annoyance when the TSA agent refused to allow me to bring it through because it "resembled a
weapon."

TSA Dodges
Congressional Investigation of Breach. Osama bin Laden has approximately 53 half-siblings.
Last week, ABC reported that 12 of them have FAA pilot's licenses, making them "eligible to fly
aircraft anywhere in the United States." While this is indeed an eye-opener of a headline, Osama
bin Laden's high-profile siblings and the FAA are a small concern compared to the threat posed by
thousands of would-be foreign pilots routinely granted pilot licenses thanks to the Transportation
Safety Administration (TSA).

Are Some Passengers
Safer Than Others? After its dogged insistence since 9/11 that objects with points or sharp
edges (regardless of size) were a threat to aviation security, the TSA is now considering reversing itself,
and recognizing that the mountain of pen knives and scissors it has confiscated were never really a
hijacking threat.

[No, but it made really good TV news footage.]

Excellent: Flying Blind Against
Islamic Terrorism. A 9-year-old boy carrying a "Going to Grandma's" bag,
with a stuffed animal "Beanie Baby" hanging out of it, is pulled aside, told to take
his shoes off, and searched. An 82-year-old man who can barely walk because of
arthritis is told to stand and raise his hands and is patted down. Females
undergo "enhanced" or "more intrusive" screening as their breasts, genitals, and buttocks are
subjected to "pat-down searches," even as hundreds of thousands of airport workers with access
to planes undergo no screening whatsoever.

FAA Suspends 2 Air Traffic Controllers Over Deadly Midair
Crash. [Scroll down] The two employees, who were not identified by the FAA, were placed on
administrative leave with pay. The FAA said it has begun disciplinary proceedings against the controller, who was
handling the small plane that collided with a tour helicopter, and against the supervisor on duty at the time. The
FAA said the controller at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey was involved in "apparently inappropriate conversations" on
the telephone at the time of the accident.

The Editor says...
If you ask me, "administrative leave with pay" means "unscheduled vacation." In any other
industry, someone who had even the slightest appearance of negligently causing a fatal accident
would be fired on the spot.

TSA detains
official from Ron Paul group. The Transportation Security Administration is investigating the
detention and harassment of a Ron Paul organization official by airport screeners, an incident that was caught
on tape at a St. Louis airport. Steve Bierfeldt, director of development for Campaign for Liberty,
was selected for additional screening after officials spotted a metal box in his luggage that contained a large
amount of cash and checks made out to the campaign. Mr. Bierfeldt was attending his organization's
regional conference in St. Louis and said he was keenly aware, as the situation unfolded March 29, of
a controversial report issued to Missouri law enforcement officials intended to identify members of
radical militia members.

Don't
burden us all for fear of terrorism. I lost count of the number of hours of my life
wasted away in queues to weedle out illicit nail-clippers, cigarette lighters and baby milk from the
luggage of obviously law-abiding passengers. And then, two weeks ago, I arrived in New Zealand
and almost immediately boarded an internal flight from Auckland to Nelson. What a joy.
It was no more complicated than getting on a bus.

At last!Green
Light For Profiling. Nearly seven years after the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration is
finally reconsidering its opposition to one of the most effective counterterrorism weapons at its disposal.
In the months ahead, FBI agents may be able to profile potential terrorists on the basis of suspicious traits and
activities, including their ethnic and religious backgrounds. Those most likely to commit acts of
Islamic terrorism will no longer be able to hide in plain sight.

Update:Sniffer dogs to wear 'Muslim' bootees.
Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence. Guidelines
being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs
to search for drugs and explosives. The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have
been extended to include other buildings.

Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern
Liberals "Think". At the airports, in order not to discriminate, we have to intentionally make
ourselves stupid. We have to pretend we don't know things we do know, and we have to pretend that the
next person who is likely to blow up an airplane is as much the 87-year-old Swedish great-great-grandmother as
those four 27-year-old imams newly arrived from Syria screaming "Allahu Akbar!" just before they board the
plane. In order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly
indiscriminate.

Air marshals' names tagged on 'no-fly' list.
Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched
those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are
allowed to board in the future.

The
Airport Security Follies: Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security
remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe
have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational,
wasteful and pointless. ... We are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in
a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of
time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.

Airline Captains Do What, Again?
About two years after 9/11 I was selected at random by a TSA agent for additional security screening at an
airport checkpoint. I was asked to remove my hat, shoes, belt, and jacket, after which I was told to
spread my arms and legs for electronic "wanding". When I asked why I had been chosen for the extra
attention, two more agents quickly appeared, and their unsmiling faces emphasized that airport security was,
indeed, very serious business. "We need to be sure you don't have anything you can use to take control
of an aircraft", the screener told me. I will never forget the absurdity of his words. You see, I
was, in fact, about to take control of an aircraft, an Airbus A320 to be precise, and fly it up the Potomac
River to LaGuardia. That's what airline Captains like me get paid to do.

Methanol Fuel Cells Cleared For
U.S. Planes. Methanol fuel cells are now allowed on airplanes. This paragraph sums up the
inconsistency nicely: "So now, innocuous gels/liquids/shampoos are deemed too hazardous to bring inside
the airplane cabin, but a known volatile liquid (however safe it may be) is required to be stored inside your
carryon baggage? I'm not criticizing the technology here, but I have a feeling that that this DOT logic
is going to be questioned repeatedly by frazzled flyers."

Sinks for Muslims
at airport are up in air. Special floor-level sinks that would make it easier for Muslims to
wash their feet before prayer are part of the current plans for restrooms that would serve taxi drivers in a
new airport terminal due for completion next year. But airport officials, who last week said the sinks
were needed to solve a potential safety hazard from wet floors and to make the restrooms more sanitary,
said Friday [9/21/2007] that plans for the foot sinks were "only preliminary."

How
Muslim footbaths threaten America's social fabric: There's an uproar in the U.K. over recent
comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury that, given the country's growing and restive Muslim population, it
is "unavoidable" that certain aspects of Islamic law would, at some point, have to be accepted in Britain.
What many Americans do not realize is that there's a concerted effort by some in the American Muslim community
to move slowly in a similar direction right here in the United States.

Muslim sensitivity training for 45,000 airport
workers. The Transportation Security Administration — created after 9/11 to safeguard America's
airports — is providing Islamic sensitivity training to 45,000 airport security officers so they'll know what
to expect when Muslims fly from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia to participate in the annual "hajj," or pilgrimage
to Mecca.

[If Mecca is so great, why buy a round-trip ticket?]

Profile in
sanity. Osama and his pals must take great joy at watching 80-year-old grandmothers being
patted down and their creams confiscated by jumpy security people. … Of course, the sane way to
protect Americans in the sky is to stop looking for nail files and begin profiling people who might
actually cause terror damage. That is not "racial" profiling, that is "terror" profiling. Most
of the recent terror activities have been perpetuated by young Muslim men. So it is these people who
need greater scrutiny when they check in for a flight.

Airport
Idiocy: Five years after 9/11, our air-security system still misses the main point. We screen
for things, but largely ignore the obvious: Terrorists are people — so we need to be examining
people, not just what they carry on board.

Airport
Insecurity: The only downside to the trip was my having to deal with airport security. In
Burbank, I was pulled out of line, not because, God forbid, I was trying to sneak a bottle of water or a jar of
hair gel aboard, but because my can of deodorant and my tube of Crest were deemed too large. The two items
were promptly confiscated. Fitting the terrorist profile as I do — being a bald 67-year-old
American male — it made perfect sense that they'd want to separate me from those potentially lethal
toiletries.

Flying the Politically-Correct Skies:
Political correctness has harmed our nation's aviation security, as common-sense measures have been
attacked by the left. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union was very critical of the Computer
Assisted Passenger Profiling System (CAPPS II), because it was "secretive, lacking due process protections
for people who are unfairly tagged." Any attempt to screen Arab-Americans and foreign nationals has led to
charges of profiling and racism. The left seems to have no problem with grandmothers and babies being
searched, but insists we leave young Arabic men alone.

Hand
over your toothpaste. I was standing in the security line at the airport in Atlanta. I
removed my shoes and my belt, emptied the change from my pockets, discarded my water bottle and placed my tote
bag on the belt that would carry it through the X-ray machine. Suddenly, I was pulled aside. "Sir,
do you know that you are not allowed to carry on board more than a 3.2 ounce tube of toothpaste?"
Asked to explain my blatant breach of security, I sheepishly responded that I had brushed my teeth a number
of times with the toothpaste, and surely there must now be less than 3.2 ounces. At that very
moment, the assistant head of security for the airport walked by and inquired what the problem was.

Our Carry-On Luggage Is Not the Real
Problem. If termites are weakening a home's foundation, what do we do? We call the
exterminator and eliminate the problem. If armed robbers are at our doors trying to break their
way in, what do we do? We defend ourselves to the best of our abilities until the authorities arrive
to eliminate the threat. If Islamic totalitarians come close to murdering hundreds of people by mixing
common household materials to blow up airplanes, what do we do? Apparently, we stop carrying
liquids and gels in our carry-on luggage.

Screening
for terrorists as nicely as possible. One of the frustrating reasons the U.S. government feels
compelled to spend all of this time and energy coming up with computerized lie detectors is that civil
libertarians can't trust airport security personnel to do the same thing. Why? Because it's
possible for humans to be racist. The TSA's more established security system, Screening Passengers by
Observation Technique, or SPOT, relies on human intelligence instead of the artificial kind. … This
apparently is unacceptable for civil libertarians.

Man
threatened with arrest at Heathrow for wearing Transformers T-shirt. An airline passenger
claimed that a security guard threatened to arrest him because he was wearing a T-shirt showing a cartoon
robot with a gun. Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at
Heathrow's Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed 'offensive.'

Veils to be lifted at British
airports. Immigration officers at British airports will begin lifting the veils of passengers to
verify identity, The Scotsman said Sunday [12/24/2006]. The order came after it was revealed that
suspected killer Mustaf Jama flew from London's Heathrow airport to Somalia using his sister's
passport. He is believed to have worn a woman's niqab, which has just a slit for eyes,
and was not required to lift the veil.

Drawing a veil over common
sense. Mustaf Jama and his younger brother Yusuf, were Somali asylum seekers with a string of
criminal convictions. But it has been reported — according to 'police sources' —
that Mustaf may have managed to escape justice by fleeing back to Somalia using his sister's passport and
dressed as a woman in a niqab, a veil that covers the entire body leaving only the eyes visible.

NJ
Muslim group tracking airport run-ins. A New Jersey Muslim group is launching a nationwide effort
to record complaints about Muslims being wrongfully detained or questioned at airports to determine where the
worst problem areas are. The goal is not to file lawsuits, but to get to the source of problems and
correct it, said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer for the American Muslim Union.

[Don't forget, Mr. Mohammed, it is the Muslims who are the reason for all this airport inconvenience.
The Muslims are the source of this problem, not the victims of it.

If Cattle Flew: This
is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that
TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one -- the
ritual abuse of passengers. Now there's a security problem.

Airport Secrity Nixes Heisman
Trophy. Troy Smith's Heisman Trophy was shipped home because airport security would not
allow the Ohio State quarterback to take it on the plane Tuesday [12/12/2006].

Pumpkin Pie: New
Threat in Sky. Apparently pumpkin pies are too dangerous to allow to fly. The Cleveland
Plain Dealer reports: "Overall, operations at Hopkins [Airport in Cleveland] were smooth, [TSA
functionary Rick] DeChant said, but there was at least one unexpected hiccup this week. 'In the last
two days, we have taken a dozen baked pies,' he said. Pie filling apparently is banned from carry-on
luggage, too. But the pies didn't go to waste. They were taken to the airport's United Service
Organizations lounge, where soldiers passing through can relax and eat."

The Editor says...
This is an obvious shakedown. If the pies are dangerous, why are they feeding
them to the soldiers? Here's another obvious scam:

Even the Guards Are
Confused. My brother ... had to go through security and wanted to take a bottle of (unopened)
water. He was prevented by the guard and was told he could buy bottled water inside. He asked
why those bottles were safe, to be told that those inside had been 'screened'. He offered to hand his
bottle over to be Xrayed, to then be told that they could not detect explosives with xrays. He then asked
how they screened the bottles of water inside, to be told that every item goes through the xray machine.

Jewish man removed
from airplane for praying. Some fellow passengers are questioning why an Orthodox Jewish man was
removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight in Montreal last week for praying. The man was a passenger on a
Sept. 1 flight from Montreal to New York City when the incident happened. The airplane was heading
toward the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox
man began to pray.

Airport
security shook down the wrong guy. So I'm on my way to Vegas and I'm at the Calgary
airport going through the ritual, post-9/11 nonsense that makes everybody feel better about air
travel, when the people in charge of keeping us safe decide that the best way to fight international
terrorism is to roust a 90-year-old man. I am not kidding. And he's not a
healthy 90-year-old either.

Stupid
airport security: Americans who fit no terrorist profile — mothers
with children, blind and disabled people, elderly couples — are frisked, groped
and hassled. What's even more stupid is that pilots and flight attendants face
similar screening. Here's my question to you: If a pilot is intent on crashing
a plane into a building, does he need to carry anything on board to do it?

Stupid
airport security II: The Transportation Security Administration behaves
as if all passengers and all baggage pose an equal security threat, and that's stupid,
because not nearly all passengers and baggage pose a security threat. They've
seized articles such as tweezers, toy soldiers, hat pins, sewing scissors and other
items they deem as threatening to flight security.

Stupid
airport security III: While my focusing on all possible threats wouldn't
be smart, it would make me a prime candidate to become a TSA official. Their
vision of airport security is to focus on the possible as well as the probable.

Who
(And What) Is Flying On Your Flight? Recent events have once again
highlighted our concern about who and what are flying aboard our commercial
airliners because there is still no reassurance from the government that the issues
raised are under control. To many of us, it appears we continue to be probed and tested for
aviation security vulnerabilities. In short, we still don't seem to have a handle on whom and
what is aboard our commercial airliners despite almost three years of federal control over
aviation security.

Are
Educated Screeners Too Much To Ask? The $6-per-hour airport security screener, arguably the main
reason cited for the federalization of our nation's airport security, is about to rise like the mythical
Phoenix from the ashes of 911. Disguised as federal officers, they will become our first line of defense
against aviation terrorism.

Clipper
Class: A pair of nail scissors and a one-way ticket to airport-security
hell. Running the airline gauntlet can turn into a protracted private struggle, as you
arrive the now-prescribed two hours early to inch through long domestic check-in lines that
seem designed to enhance security mainly by offering incentives for attrition.

Infants Among Those Caught Up
in "No-Fly" Confusion. Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports
throughout the United States because their names are the same as, or similar to, those of
possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly list." Because of these screenings,
parents have missed flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents
faxed to allow them to board.

Same story:Even
Babies Aren't Exempt From "No-Fly" List. Infants have been stopped
from boarding planes at airports throughout the United States because their names
are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly"
list. It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights
while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed.

Editor's Note:
According to this story,

The
Transportation Security Administration, which administers the list,
instructs airlines not to deny boarding to children under 12 -- or select them for extra
security checks -- even if their names match those on a list.

... So why didn't the screeners know this?

Baby is sent through X-ray machine
at LAX. A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old
grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine. The early
Saturday accident — bizarre but not unprecedented — caught airport workers by surprise,
even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.

Child caught in baggage X-ray.
A child between three and five years old managed to slip away from distracted parents and wander onto a baggage
check-in ramp at Oslo's main airport at Gardermoen. It wasn't until the child passed through luggage
X-ray equipment that officials reacted.

Michael Smerconish has written a new book,
"Flying
Blind": How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety
Post 9/11. In a post-9/11 world marked by constant threat of terrorism, why do
the Department of Transportation and the Transportation Security Administration continue
to jeopardize airline security by enforcing outdated screening regulations that cater to
political correctness? The policy in question - disallowing airline security
screeners from using profiling to target young Arab males for secondary screening - goes
against the basic police investigative strategy of using pertinent information to pinpoint
suspects and prevent further terrorist attacks.

ACLU Opposes Safe Air
Travel. Unlike President Bush, the American Civil Liberties Union is not interested in air
security. Like Senator Kerry, they prefer sensitivity to safety. [In November 2004], the
"nonpartisan" ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Logan International Airport's "behavior pattern recognition
program" on the grounds that it "condones" racial- and ethnic- profiling. The suit alleges that Logan's
safety procedures are unconstitutional, and the litigants are asking for monetary damages.

Counterterrorism in
Airports: It may be less secure to have a computer decide who to wand,
or to have random chance decide whose baggage to open, but it's easier to pretend
that prejudice is not an issue. "It's not the officer's fault; the computer
selected him" plays well as a defense. And in a world where security theatre
still matters more than security, this is an important consideration.

The Terrorist
Profile – Political Correctness Is Deadly. Nationality, race, and
criminal background make up a good terrorist profile. One other characteristic
should be added to the profile and that is religion. Without exception every
terrorist has been Muslim. If you just add males and an age of twenty-something
to the nationality, race, criminal background, and religious characteristic you have
a pretty solid terrorist profile.

U.S.
Plane Wrong On Airport Security. As you travel through our nation's airports
this summer, take note of those who, after walking through the metal detector without
incident, still get pulled for what's called random secondary screening. If your
experience mirrors my own, you'll see plenty of 85-year-old ladies with aluminum
walkers, and young kids get the treatment.

What
Are You Smiling At, Traveler?. The fight against terrorism has wiped the smile
off the face of British passport holders. The UK Passport Service said Friday [8/6/2004]
it would forbid open-mouthed smiles on passport pictures, one of several rules introduced to
comply with strict new U.S. standards.

Grins banned from passport pics.
Travellers have been ordered not to look too happy in their passport photographs to avoid confusing facial
recognition scanners. Toothy, open mouthed grins are being outlawed from the tiny 35mm by
45mm photographs because they will throw off scanners used at airports.

Protect Us From Terrorists, Not
Pilots. Arming pilots is the only real solution, and not just from the standpoint
of cost-efficiency. The pilot is the commander of his craft in the same way a passenger
liner's captain exercises authority over his ship. Each and every day, commercial
passenger and cargo airline pilots demonstrate the sound judgment and sense of responsibility
required to fly expensive, technically complicated airliners. They take their
responsibilities seriously. Pilots, in fact, have to undergo extensive psychological
testing in order to fly commercially, and many have previously served their country
in the military.

Arab hijackers
now eligible for pre-boarding. In June 2001, as Mohamed Atta completed his
final "to do" list before the 9/11 attacks Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta was
conducting a major study on whether airport security was improperly screening passengers
based on ethnicity. As Mineta explained: "We must protect the civil rights of
airline passengers." Protecting airline passengers from sudden death has never made
it onto Mineta's radar screen.

Jiving
us about security: It seems as though the Federal Aviation
Administration's and Department of Transportation's operative assumption
is that there's an equal chance that any person, including pilots and crew
members, who boards a plane is a potential hijacker.

Airport Security: The
Idiots Rule: While boarding a Midwest Express flight to Milwaukee, former Vice President
Al Gore was pulled aside at the boarding gate. He was frisked and his carry-on luggage
searched. How might we reconcile these security measures with any semblance of intelligence? Could
it be that security people think Americans will put up with anything, no matter how stupid, as long as there's
equality in treatment?

Airline Security: One Big
Joke. You never know what we short young women of Asian descent traveling alone with small briefcases
stuffed with newspapers, Dramamine, chocolate chip cookies and store-bought beverages might be plotting.

Flying the Unfriendly
Skies: A friend of mine, who happens to be a police chief, was stopped before boarding a plane,
and relieved of the deadly weapon he was carrying — a pair of apparently lethal tweezers.
Other friends tell similar stories about having been stripped of such dangerous weapons as nail clippers.
Not long ago, Lyn Nofziger raged about being told he couldn't board a plane with the small penknife he's been
carrying around for years — even when going in and out of the White House when he worked there.

Wait Until the Feds Take Over.
As others may also attest, I have never viewed flying as particularly pleasant, and a recent cross-country trip
I took with my family did nothing to change my thinking. For those who have not flown commercial aircraft
since the September 11 attacks, you are in for a rude awakening when you take to the skies again. You
have not faced the insanity that passes for modern airport security.

Search for a knife led to chaos:
Airport security screeners feared that a passenger had managed to walk through their checkpoint with a 12-inch
knife. They never found a knife, but by searching the bags of everyone who had boarded American Airlines
Flight 596 to Boston, they discovered a pilot's pepper spray.

Don't arrest terrorists, INS tells
airport agents: In another example of the federal bureaucracy getting in the way of fighting
terrorism, Immigration and Naturalization Service inspectors at Los Angeles International
Airport — the nation's third-busiest — have been told by their superiors not to arrest
terrorist suspects, even though they carry guns and have arrest authority,
reveals an internal INS memo, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily.com.

Bush pays homage to the rituals of
liberalism: Last week, [President] Bush's Department of Transportation required airport security
to search former Vice President Al Gore. There's a lot not to like about Al Gore, but he's not a
terrorist. Gore said he was glad he was searched. Why? So that a potential terrorist could be
spared the trouble? Searching Al Gore is a purely religious act. It is the purposeless, fetishistic
performance of rituals in accordance with the civic religion of liberalism.

Ashamed to Be White: All over the
country, American citizens who fit no terrorist profile are being patted down in long airport security lines,
their luggage rifled. Young mothers with children, elderly couples, even flight attendants and pilots are
searched.

JFK
illegally targeting Muslims, groups say. Muslim, Arab and South Asian passengers are being
profiled by Homeland Security officers at Kennedy Airport, civil liberties groups said Wednesday, citing
a New Jersey family that was detained and interrogated after a flight from Dubai last week.

[It's a little late to ask questions after the flight, isn't it?]

Plane
flies five passengers from US to London. A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for
flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board. The flight from Chicago to
London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.

British Airways flies empty jets
15,000 miles. British Airways has been criticised for operating at least three long-haul "ghost flights" totalling
15,000 miles with no passengers on board in little over a week. It flew empty 747-400s — the biggest
planes in its fleet — to Hong Kong and Mumbai despite having nobody but the aircrafts' crews on board.

The Editor says...
This is one of the few new ideas at the airport that actually makes sense, because airplanes use fuel
in a much more direct proportion to their payload than trains or buses or cars.

'Attendants too fat to fly'.
An Indian court has upheld the right of state-owned Air India to ground overweight flight attendants, a report
said on Thursday [6/5/2008]. Lawyers for the airline told the court the attendants were moved from flight
duty to ground duty when they failed to meet minimum physical fitness standards, the Hindu newspaper reported.